Muny Aims For New Fans, While Keeping Fans Cooler

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ST. LOUIS, MO. (KTVI) – Sean Smith is a fan of a fan.

'It’s very quiet,' says Sean Smith the Muny Director of Operations. 'It's very quiet. That's one of the things we wanted to determine. This fan is one of the four that's going to go into the theater.'

Two years ago the Muny took a twirl at a study to see how to move air around the outdoor theater, a necessity in our sweltering St. Louis summers.

'We've been working over the last few days with our sound engineers and the mechanical engineers and the overall consensus is thumbs up we're going to be able to run these during a performance,' says Smith.

Meaning, fans of the Muny will be cooler, thanks to fans of the Muny.

In the past the Muny couldn't keep the fans running during the performance, it'd be too loud, and you can't just turn up the sound to drown out the fans.

'There's a certain interaction that sound waves and air waves have and what we didn't want to do is create a situation where we're muddying the sound in the theater,' says Smith. 'We feel very proud of the sound system we have and whether you're in the front row or back row you can hear everything crystal clear.'

There will be four fans placed in the audience and two backstage.Each one has a radius of 100 to 150 feet

'They've got this thing running at full speed right now,' says Smith. 'So it looks slower than our existing fans but the difference is where our existing fans have blades that are eight foot in diameter you actually have 20 foot across moving more air at a slower speed.'